Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Higher Education, Science & Technology is expected to adopt a draft Budget Review and Recommendation report by all entities in the Ministry including the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), despite failing to table its annual report for the 2018/19 financial year.
NSFAS is one of the entities that has failed to produce audited annual reports to the Auditor-General (A-G) or Parliament by the required legal deadline. This means that, as things stand, the student funding scheme is unable to account for how it utilised the R30 billion it received in the previous financial year due to its failure to submit the financial reports on time.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) will, therefore, write to the Minister of Higher Education, Blade Nzimande, to call for a complete overhaul of NSFAS and its entire management. This will be done to ensure that going forward, especially now leading up to the processing of applications and allocation of 2020 allowances, rigorous checks and balances are followed in the management and disbursement funds by the student funding scheme.
NSFAS should be directly accountable to Parliament and the Minister of Higher Education to ensure the following:
- Transparency and accountability in the application process,
- Appropriate and expedient allocation of funds to qualifying students and,
- Improved management in the disbursement of allowance to existing students.
For years NSFAS has been riddled with financial difficulties, fraud and corruption due to years of mismanagement of funds by corrupt officials, who awarded dodgy tenders to the defunct VBS Mutual Bank at the expense of student allowances – NSFAS is clearly in a crisis and is consequently unable to fulfill their mandate of providing education opportunities to indigent young people of our society.
Parliament must not gloss over the fact that NSFAS is really failing the young people of our country.
The Higher Education and Training’s report indicates that there are 600 000 qualifying students that did not receive funds from Universities, Postgraduates and largely TVET college students because of NSFAS’s inability to timeously process payments and approve applications. That is 600 000 young people whose future is held up by gross corruption, excessive wastage, mismanagement of funds and fraud which has diverted funds away from education, leaving these qualifying students without access to education. Some underprivileged students at tertiary institutions are suffering, often go hungry, without study material and are evicted from their accommodations because of NSFAS fails to pay their allowances on time.
It is revolting that those responsible for this crisis are more concerned about staff bonuses rather than ensuring that no qualifying and the academically deserving student is left to starve, sleeping in campus bathrooms or without textbooks to acquire an education that will change the circumstances of their birth.
The DA will not stand by while an institution that is meant to make available educational opportunities to needy students be an open drain of corruption and poor management. We will ensure that those who run these entities are held to the highest degree of accountable, with the utmost consequence management to ensure that indigent young people’s lives in SA are changed for the better.
The DA will continue to monitor the developments, so that as to ensure that no student is left behind.